Surgical or medical procedures are often performed on a body, for example a human body or anatomy, to repair or replace various portions thereof. For example, tendons that attach muscle to bone or ligaments that attach bones to other bones may be replaced for various reasons. For example, an injury to a ligament, such as a ligament in the leg may need to be replaced. Alternatively, the tendon from the muscle may simply be loosened from its attachment point and need to be reattached without the necessity of a replacement.
Regardless of the reason, soft tissues are often fixed to various positions on the bone. For example, to replace a natural tendon fixation point or to replace the tendon itself, fixing a graft to a selected bone area may be desired. One means to fix the soft tissue to the selected area is to provide a suture through a selected portion of the soft tissue and fix the other end of the suture to a selected area on the bone. Various structures can be provided to anchor or hold the suture in the selected bone area.
Although suture anchors do provide a member to fix the suture to a selected portion of a boney portion, it is often desired to provide a suture anchor that is able to substantially protect the suture from engagement with the bone. Generally, suture anchors that are threaded with a suture do not provide complete protection from engagement of the suture with the bone in the bore in which the suture is positioned. This requires greater care and precision while implanting the suture anchor than would otherwise be required.
Also, many suture anchors are substantially difficult to thread or properly engage with the suture. This is particularly the case when the suture must be passed through a substantial portion of the suture anchor. Often, only the eyelets or small bores are the access points to the suture anchor channel, thus limiting the ability to thread the suture through the anchor during a surgical procedure. Therefore, it is also desirable to provide a suture anchor that will provide substantially easy threading of a suture during a surgical procedure.